Wow... Former UK Ambassador, And Julian Assange Supporter, Ain't Playing Around !!!

Craig Murray speaking @ the Ecuador Embassy 19/08/2012

Lots of good info there, but THIS...

MURRAY: Let me talk about four people, all of whom I know personally. James Yee, chaplin at Guantanamo, blew the whistle on torture in Guantanamo Bay, was charged with adultery and pornography on a government computer. Janis Karpinski, brigadier general at Abu Ghraib, blew the whistle on Donald Rumsfeld’s sanctioning of torture at Abu Ghraib, was immediately charged with shoplifting. Scott Ritter, UN weapons inspector, entrapped by a honey trap. I was charged myself with sexual coercion of visa applicants after I blew the whistle on extraordinary rendition…

3. K & R

4. You know you're on the right side when men like Craig Murray are on your side.

He himself was a whistle blower, which took so much courage as he was an Ambassador and could have simply waited out his term. Instead when he saw what our Ally, Uzbekistan was doing to its own people, and that the US and Britain, his own country, knew about it, he did not wait.

For his courage he was fired, and later subjected to an attempt to accuse him too of, guess what? Baseless allegations which were proven to be untrue, but it's their old standby. When someone embarrasses them, exposed their hypocrisy, rather than the old-fashioned 'suicides' they now us sex allegations to try to destroy whistle-blowers.

I will say it again, the hypocrisy of the Western nations involved in this circus, claiming to care about rape, get zero credibility from me since they have refused to investigate and prosecute the documented rapes of Iraqi and Afghan women. Not only that, so little importance do they give to rape, that we have told we are 'moving on' from those crimes.

Craig Murray, a true hero and a man of inegrity. Why is Uzbekistan's brutal dictator being propped up by Britain and the US? Aren't we always hearing about 'brutal dictators' who need to be stopped? His exposures of torture by Karamov's regime were basically ignored, just as Assange's exposures of War Crimes have been ignored.

78. "Why is Uzbekistan's brutal dictator being propped up by Britain and the US? "

Geography and energy reserves. All of the 'stan countries are in play in a contest between West and East (russia/china) for the oil and gas reserves.
This link explains a whole lot, has some interesting maps.

5. There is, of course, a pattern.

Among other things, his voluntary disclosures led to:
** an agreement between the United States and UBS for the payment of $780 million in fines and penalties
** the creation of three IRS amnesty programs, under which 35,000 people have come forward and admitted to over $5 billion in illegal, secret bank accounts
** the recovery of billions of taxpayer dollars by the IRS
** the termination of the entire $20 billion illegal UBS program that existed to solicit and encourage wealthy Americans to hide their money in secret, offshore accounts
** a historic treaty between Switzerland and the United States requiring Switzerland to reveal the identity of over 4,600 tax evaders (the richest UBS clients) for the first time
** the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)
** the IRS hiring over 350 additional employees to track down persons who hold illegal, secret offshore accounts.
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1411&Itemid=229

His reward? While the tax cheats that he exposed were given relatively light punishments, he was prosecuted by the Federal government and sent to prison. This whistleblower served his full term, less the mandatory good time credits afforded all federal inmates.

the prosecutor, Kevin Downing, who filed charges against Mr. Birkenfeld and recommended that the judge ‘throw the book at him’ has left employment with the federal government to join the private law firm of Miller and Chevalier. This firm represents persons who willfully violate U.S. tax laws, and persons who have illegal, undeclared offshore accounts.

37. I would say we know hedid but proving it without

6. Good point, & it's for that reason that I question the charges against Assange.

People can be bought off or coerced into making charges against someone the government wants to prosecute very badly.

In that respect, I'm a cynic who has lived through the assassinations of the Kennedys & Martin Luther King and the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg who gave us the Pentagon Papers. We've also seen other suspicious coincidences like the strange deaths of those who were tied to the Jessica Lynch rescue; the strange timely death of an election fraud witness (Mike Connell); & ostracization of those in high government positions who were begging to be heard but fired or ignored (Sybil Edmonds & Colleen Rowley), as well as the ostracization of the Abu Ghraib whistleblower, Joe Darby.

82. Thank you for remembering. Here are too many more...

9. DURec.

The 1% and their employees in Washington
don't want YOU to know
what OUR government is doing
with OUR money
in OUR name.

War Profiteers are HONORED!
New Free Trade treaties are "negotiated" in secret.
Corrupt Wall Street Bankers get bailed out and Walk Freewhile the Whistle Blowers and Watch Dogs are persecuted.

You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
Solidarity99!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12. Janis Karpinski wasn't exactly a whistle blower

... O'BRIEN: You had no control over this facility after a certain point?

KARPINSKI: I can't say no control at a certain point, but it was certainly far less control. And the reason I retained any control is because I had MPs that were still working out there and they remained under the 800th MP Brigade.

O'BRIEN: Were you aware that some of your soldiers were involved in this or were taking pictures of some of the things that were going on?

KARPINSKI: Absolutely not, absolutely had no knowledge, not even a hint or a suggestion of any such activities ...

... There are women in Murray’s world, but they are not people. They are props ... (almost all women are described in overt sexual terms, unless they’re old or ugly) ... His wife Fiona is never discussed in terms of love or regret—which one might expect for a woman he’s cheated on routinely—but as a career boost. His new girl-toy, Nadira, was found at a strip club where he handed her a wad of cash and his business card, along with an invitation to be his mistress ....

Indeed, Moe at Jezebel summarized the whole sordid affair quite aptly: “… it did not help that also, he was sort of a drunk who left his wife for an Uzbek heroin addict’s daugher who stripped at a North Korean club and was dating a 19-year-old American soldier when first she laid eyes on him” ....

98. Edit.

14. Here's some background on the Scott Ritter case

Jan 14, 2010
Ex-U.N. arms inspector Ritter arrested in online child-sex stingScott Ritter, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq who harshly criticized the Bush administration's case for war, has been arrested in an online sex sting for allegedly masturbating on webcam while talking dirty to a Pennsylvania police officer posing as a 15- year-old girl. In 2001, Ritter faced similar charges after an online sting by New York police that he blamed on his criticism of the war. Charges were later dropped ...
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/ex-un-nuke-inspector-ritter-arrested-in-online-child-sex-sting/1

Trial begins for ex-weapons inspector
Delmar resident Scott Ritter was charged in online sex sting
Associated Press
Updated 10:47 p.m., Tuesday, April 12, 2011
STROUDSBURG, Pa. -- No one disputes that former U.N. chief weapons inspector and prominent Iraq war critic Scott Ritter entered an adult chat room two years ago, traded sexually graphic messages and performed a sex act on himself in front of a webcam. What the jury in the Delmar man's online sex-sting trial must decide is whether he thought the person on the other end of the chat was a 15-year-old girl ...
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Detective-testifies-in-Scott-Ritter-s-sex-sting-1333492.php

Prison for ex-U.N. official Scott Ritter in Monroe sex sting case
Former weapons inspector gets up to 5˝ years
... The "girl" Ritter contacted in February 2009 turned out to be a Barrett Township police officer posing undercover to catch sexual predators online. Ritter said he believed the person was an adult pretending to be a minor, possibly as some sort of sexual fantasy ... Before the sentencing hearing began, defense attorneys Gary Kohlman and Todd Henry requested the court grant Ritter a new trial. The request was based on a recent New York appellate court ruling saying that the records of two 2001 incidents involving Ritter in Albany County, N.Y., should never have been unsealed and then used by the prosecution in the Pennsylvania trial. On two separate occasions in 2001, Ritter met what appeared to be two girls, one age 14 and the other age 16, in adult chat rooms and traveled to different locations to meet the girls, who both turned out to be undercover police. Ritter told police at the time that his controversial 1998 resignation from the UN had led him into depression and self-destructive behavior that he had been hiding from his family, according to records ...
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111027/NEWS/110270321

16. The odds are so against you. The world is watching now and the old smear campaign tactics just

confirm what people already know. The harder they work to discredit whistle-blowers, the more people start paying attention, TO the whistle-blowers.

Btw, what is your position on the amnesty given to those responsible for the War Crimes exposed in the War Logs? How about the horrific evidence of the raping of Iraqi and Afghan women and the sodomy of children in our detention centers?

Did you read the Zaguba Report eg? Watch the Abu Ghraib hearings and see the faces of even Republicans after they viewed the tapes, confirming the Rapes and Sodomy of Iraqi women and children?

Have you worked as hard to bring those criminals to justice? We know who is responsible, we have the evidence, the victims, those who survived and who are not too traumatized to try, have sought justice in our courts, I don't recall ever seeing you speak out against those egregious crimes.

But those women and some of them have been courageous enough to speak about the nightmares they endured, have received no justice. Since you are a prolific author of OPs, are there any you can point to where you were as outraged and hardworking on behalf of those women?

Do you agree with 'moving on' from those horrific crimes against women and children? Did you ever read Sy Herch's horrified early reports of what he was told, and which proved later to be true?

21. Tu quoque: supporting Assange is not the same as working to bring the Bush era thugs to justice

23. So you oppose the Obama administration's interference with the Spanish Court's

prosecution of the Bush Six (torturers) as revealed in the Wikileaks Cables then? You support bringing these criminals to justice?

What should be done by the US Government about the women who were raped? What HAS been done? Where are they? Does anyone care?

Have you ever put this much effort in trying to get justice for these women who we KNOW were raped, no 'allegations', the criminals video-taped their crimes and our elected officials viewed those tapes.

Wikileaks revelations of the interference of the US Government to protect the accused perpetrators of these crimes, shattered the hopes of people around the world that they would ever be brought to justice. Had we not seen those cables, we would never have known why the effort to bring them to justice went away.

There's no indication Janis Karpinski blew a whistle: I posted a link upthread in which she says she had no idea what was going on

I also posted three links about the Ritter prosecution. It was a local prosecution, based on a Pennsylvania sting, and Ritter's defense that he thought he was talking to an adult pretending to be a child was undermined by two sets of 2001 records from stings in New York showing that Ritter had twice traveled to meet someone who had self-identified online as a minor. I might have some issues with the 2010 prosecution of Ritter, but he agreed to the basic material facts, and I can't see any reason to think that the two 2001 New York stings and the 2010 Pennsylvania sting had anything to do with each other or anything to do with targeting Ritter for some activity in 1998 or earlier

So it seems Craig Murray is not being very careful with the facts about Karpinski or Ritter

In response to my posting the factual links regarding Ritter, I was told I didn't care if the Bush thugs ever came to justice. Well, frankly, I don't see how supporting Assange's ridiculous posturing in the embassy does anything to bring the Bush thugs to justice, either

33. Nobody will force you to read my posts, if they distress you

35. You misunderstand me..

I read only what I wish to read and have never used ignore or even felt the need for it.

I'm a little concerned for you though, in my opinion you are rapidly becoming a caricature if you haven't already reached that status and I'm only offering friendly advice, not trying to tell you what to do. I'm obsessive myself but I'm a serial obsessive, I don't obsess over the same thing all the time but even so my obsessive tendencies have caused me a lot of problems in my life.

My point is that you are hurting your own cause (unless of course you are secretly pro-Assange) and don't appear to be able to see that.

44. The point is that Americans used sexual humiliation as a psy-ops tool at Abu Ghraib.

The frequency of sex scandals about people who just happen to be unpopular with our intelligence community is quite suspicious in the light of that use of sexual humiliation.

Hard to say whether it is just an accident or a real psy-ops.

Anthony Wiener, Elliot Spitzer -- all very unpopular with conservatives and with the corporate bosses. Also humiliated about their sex lives. And yet, in the case of Spitzer, while his sex life was used to embarrass him, the others who had employed the same prostitute were not humiliated.

It appears that these powerful interests and the Swedish government cooperating with them may now be trying to use sexual humiliation against Assange.

I think that our government looks very carefully for any small thing they can use to humiliate anyone they don't like. Assange is just another victim of this tactic.

51. If you confuse different matters, it will not help you think clearly

Abu Ghraib was simply disgraceful, from its beginning until the Congressional cover-up

I was sorry to lose Elliot Spitzer, but he was his own victim, in a very real sense. Spitzer seemed to make some excellent moves to reign in the banks, and so (naturally) he made some banks very grumpy. However, he continued to use the same banks, that he had made grumpy, to pay for his fun with prostitutes. The bank folk knew the regulations they had to follow, so they very piously reported his little transactions to the Feds as a possible violation of federal banking regulations, forcing the Feds to investigate the matter. Of course, there was no violation of federal banking regulations, but the banks covered their butts very neatly: they could piously say they had only attempted to report a possible violation of federal banking regulations. Finally, of course, the facts came out -- and Spitzer had destroyed his own political career

50. Wow, I never expected you to come out so openly

Karpinski has made controversial accusations against her superiors in a series of interviews. In an interview with BBC Radio, Karpinski claimed that Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was sent from Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay to improve interrogations at the Iraqi prison, told her to treat prisoners "like dogs" in the sense that "if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them". Miller denies that he ever made the remarks.

In November 2006, Karpinski told Spain's El País newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld that allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation. She stated, "The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorised these specific techniques." According to Karpinski, Rumsfeld's handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished."

There have been no comments from either the Pentagon or US army spokespeople in Iraq on Karpinski's accusations.
On March 8, 2006, Karpinski gave an interview to Dateline, on the Australian SBS network. When asked who was ultimately responsible for the actions of torture and humiliation depicted in the photographs, Karpinski stated:

“You have to go back to the memorandum that was authored by our now-Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzalez, and John Yoo, from out in California, who was with the current administration at the time, and they did a memorandum, authorising departures from the Geneva Convention.

The memorandum, which was certainly discussed at length with the Secretary of Defense and the Vice-President, according to sworn statements by people who were there when those conversations took place, that authorised the initial departure . And yes, there was a memorandum that was posted at Abu Ghraib prison, that I only became aware of, after I heard of this ongoing investigation out at Abu Ghraib, and it was signed by the Secretary of Defense.

...the signature on the memorandum was over the signature block of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and the ink that was used to sign appeared to be the same ink used for this handwritten note in the margin, "make sure this happens", and it was a list of interrogation techniques that were approved, so he obviously had knowledge of those techniques.

When the Secretary of Defense, when General Miller, when General Sanchez, when General Taguba, when they testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, they were very careful to say, in response to a question about the photographs, that they knew nothing about the photographs. However, nobody on the Senate Armed Services Committee asked them "Did you know anything about the actions depicted in those photographs?" Because they would have had to give a truthful answer and the answer would have been yes, in fact they authorised the actions depicted in those photographs. The Secretary of Defense authorised it, in conversations with General Miller, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence not only authorised those actions but was staying on top of the progress of those actions and those activities.

General Janis Karpinski tells how Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld visits there with General Miller, who has plans to "gitmoize" Abu Ghraib:

"And then come the contractor interrogators and military people who had experience at Guantanamo Bay. They all arrived after Miller's visit."

Many of the MPs say they thought it was strange that detainees are kept hooded, naked, and in stress positions, but as PFC Lynndie England puts it,

"We thought it was unusual and weird and wrong, but when we first got there, the example was already set. That's what we saw. It was ok."

Inexperienced, young, trained for police work but unprepared for custodial prison work, the MPs lived in cells themselves and followed the instruction of the MI interrogators to "soften up" detainees on the night shift for questioning the following day. The film invites us to imagine their everyday experience since it would be impossible to reproduce it. (...)

Janis Karpinski speaks with fiery indignation throughout, both about prison conditions and her own demotion.

59. Amazing

Tuesday, 15 June, 2004, 11:10 GMT 12:10 UK

Iraq abuse 'ordered from the top'

The US commander at the centre of the Iraqi prisoner scandal says she was told to treat detainees like dogs. Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others.

...

Gen Karpinski said military intelligence took over part of the Abu Ghraib jail to "Gitmoize" their interrogations - make them more like what was happening in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is nicknamed "Gitmo".

...

A US general who has investigated the abuse has blamed the soldiers - and found no evidence "of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did".

But Gen Karpinski believes the soldiers had not taken the pictures of their own accord. "I know that the MP unit that these soldiers belonged to hadn't been in Abu Ghraib long enough to be so confident that one night or early morning they were going to take detainees out of their cells, pile them up and photograph themselves in various positions with these detainees."

61. Here's an interview with her six weeks earlier:

... O'BRIEN: You had no control over this facility after a certain point?

KARPINSKI: I can't say no control at a certain point, but it was certainly far less control. And the reason I retained any control is because I had MPs that were still working out there and they remained under the 800th MP Brigade.

O'BRIEN: Were you aware that some of your soldiers were involved in this or were taking pictures of some of the things that were going on?

KARPINSKI: Absolutely not, absolutely had no knowledge, not even a hint or a suggestion of any such activities ...

66. Incredible

The Army said Thursday that only one general will be disciplined for failed leadership in connection with the Abu Ghraib (search) prisoner abuse scandal and that more than a dozen lower-ranking officers have received a variety of punishments.

...

The Army also announced that it cleared three other, more senior generals of wrongdoing in the prisoner abuse cases, actions that had been previously reported but not publicly confirmed by the Army.

...

The Army's inspector general investigated four allegations against Karpinski: dereliction of duty, making a "material misrepresentation" to investigators, failure to obey a lawful order and shoplifting. Only the shoplifting and dereliction of duty allegations were substantiated.

39. Why, there are no paid astroturfers,

40. Oh, that's right! Silly me!

I'm gonna have to do penance with Dolores Umbridge's blood quill again.

There are no astroturfers on DU.
There are no astroturfers on DU. (Why's my hand itching?)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (WTF?!)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (ow)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (OW!!!)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (Isn't this child abuse?)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (I think I need an iron supplement!)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (Damn it, that's gonna leave a scar!)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (Does anyone have a spare pint of blood I can borrow?)
There are no astroturfers on DU. (Type A+ - should be plenty of donors out there... please?)
There are no astr... (thump)

41. ... Passions were stirred by a debate on the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Monday,

when former British ambassador Craig Murray named one of the women making allegations against Assange and encouraged viewers to research her background on the Internet.

Murray labelled the allegations “dubious” and said they were part of a “political agenda”.

The programme’s anchor rebuked him for naming the alleged rape victim on live television. Fellow guest Joan Smith, a columnist at the Independent newspaper, said some left-leaning men were “queuing up to cast aspersions on these women” because they were sympathetic to Assange’s political stance.

69. I was wondering when you find that.

Have you seen the hateful twitter account of that anchor, a known shill and moron who is universally reviled, btw. For those who do not know who he is, his name is David Aaronovitch Anyone who attacks Craig Murray deserves the trashing he received today and is a right wing tool.

The woman was wrong, the names of those women are well known all over the world, they themselves made their names known. A transparent ploy by the moron anchor, Aaronovitch to try to distract from what a highly respected Human Rights hero had to say.

I love the reaction that show got though. He was being trashed all over the internet. How on earth does someone like that get a show on TV. It really demonstrates the decline of the Western media.

Women do not need to be protected by these phoney, patriarchal types, who could care less about them anyhow. I despise men and women who think we are shrinking violets who cannot stand up as equals to men. Either the name of the accused is not revealed as well as the accusers, which is what I support, or both should be revealed as you have an absolute right to face your accusers.

Hiding the names of women claiming to have been raped makes the assumption that THEY have something wrong. Makes it seem they should be ashamed and protected. We don't hide the IDs of murder victims do we?

This pretense of concern for women makes me sick, especially when women are used as political footballs.

I sincerely wish, as I said before, that the raped women of Iraq were given even one tiny % of this fake concern.

I believe I asked you if you have ever done anything, as I have, to try to get justice for the women of Iraq who were raped and tortured by this government.

I also asked if you supported the US Government's policy of 'moving on' from those crimes, and of protecting the criminals who are responsible. I would really like to know if you and Aaronovich spent any time at all going after the torturers and rapists of Iraqi and Afghan women. But something tells me I will not get an answer.

94. ... There are women in Murray’s world, but they are not people. They are props

for his torture crusade, or for his sexual appetite (almost all women are described in overt sexual terms, unless they’re old or ugly), or for his career. His wife Fiona is never discussed in terms of love or regret—which one might expect for a woman he’s cheated on routinely—but as a career boost. His new girl-toy, Nadira, was found at a strip club where he handed her a wad of cash and his business card, along with an invitation to be his mistress (this, quite unironically after he expressed horror at the sexual exploitation of Uzbekistan’s women).

Indeed, Moe at Jezebel summarized the whole sordid affair quite aptly: “… it did not help that also, he was sort of a drunk who left his wife for an Uzbek heroin addict’s daugher who stripped at a North Korean club and was dating a 19-year-old American soldier when first she laid eyes on him” ....

It is also surprising, given how he flaunts his expertise in the country and region, that Murray doesn’t understand a simple, fundamental fact of life in Central Asia: rumor is fact. He gets angry when the FCO finds false accusations against his credible; Murray is smart enough to realize there is no difference between rumor and fact in much of the world, and especially there. That his life was sordid and uncontrolled enough to give such allegations even a sliver of credibility is unfortunate; as I’ve said on many occasions, and in contrast somewhat to Nathan’s argument, I don’t begrudge the man his belief in Uzbekistan’s right to be free of torture, just the ways he went about trying to end it ...

77. he was arrested twice for the same crime before 9/11

Ritter was detained in April 2001 and arrested in June 2001 in connection with police stings in which officers posed as under-aged girls to arrange meetings of a sexual nature. The first incident did not lead to any charges. He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child" after the second, but charges were dropped after he completed six months of probation and the record was sealed on condition that he avoid further trouble for a period of time. After this information was made public in early 2003, Ritter said that the timing of the leak was politically motivated.

How does somebody get tricked and caught in a sting 3 times.

Just because the guy was right about Iraq doesn't mean that he isn't also a pervert.

68. Wow! What a powerful speech!

Thanks for posting it! I didn't know his story--and I'm so glad to have heard it. But more than that, his speech is brilliant--so articulate; so intelligent; so clear. It's a thrill to listen to him pull these threads together, of the techniques of smearing whistleblowers--and his part about the lawless juntas who have seized control of western governments is electrifying. We so seldom get to hear meaningful political speech any more, it almost makes you cry.

86. I remember when he was fired for speaking out against torture. It was so rare

for anyone to do that especially during the Bush/Blair years. Instead of investigating the crimes he reported on, he himself was fired and smeared, like Assange, at the time. He was very emotional as he loved his job but could not remain silent about what he saw.

What kind of world is it when those who report the brutality of human rights abuses, are attacked, while the Perpetrators, in this case Karamov of Uzbekistan, are rewarded. We continue to back this monster supplying him with money which he uses to protect himself from his own people. He was accused of genocide a few years ago but nothing came of it, even though it was documented.

I always wondered what happened to Craig Murray and am so glad to see him still speaking out against the wrongs of his own government despite what it cost him last time.

Until you listen to this in its entirety, or actually to a Google, do not post BS about a couple of sex partners of Assange. Tacky, poor taste, offensive, but everything in context. The US "sexual bar" was set right here. A Nebraska Congressman wrote an entire book...and no one challenged it...it just fell of the national radar.